Under UCP, AB lost 170 FT university teachers

Earlier this month, Statistics Canada released data on full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities. I thought I’d take a look at how Alberta’s universities have fared over the last few years.

Some of the universities don’t have data prior to the 2016–2017 school year, so I started the dataset at 2018–2019, which happens to be the last school year when the Alberta NDP were in power.

I thought it might give us a snapshot of how Alberta has done during the first 4 years the UCP were in power.

	18–19	19–20	20–21	21–22	22–23
Athabasca	174	189	189	210	210
Grant MacEwan	423	429	429	435	432
Mount Royal	348	348	348	345	369
U of A	1,626	1,599	1,569	1,521	1,497
U of C	1,815	1,815	1,788	1,794	1,737
U of L	447	420	441	435	420
Total	4,833	4,800	4,764	4,740	4,665

Here we see that the 3 smaller universities saw increases in full-time teaching staff, while the 3 larger universities all saw decreases. Here, let’s simplify it.

	18–19	22–23	Change	% change
Athabasca	174	210	36	20.69%
Grant MacEwan	423	432	9	2.13%
Mount Royal	348	369	21	6.03%
U of A	1,626	1,497	-129	-7.93%
U of C	1,815	1,737	-78	-4.30%
U of L	447	420	-27	-6.04%
	4,833	4,665	-168	-3.48%

Under the UCP, Alberta’s universities saw a collective net loss of nearly 170 full-time teaching staff. That works out to an average of nearly 30 losses per university.

Athabasca University saw the largest increase in full-time teaching staff, both in terms of total numbers and as a percentage of 2018–2019 numbers. The University of Alberta saw the largest decreases, accounting for 3 out of every 4 losses.

Now, let’s break it down by rank. First, by professorship, which includes full professor, associate professor, and assistant professor.

	18–19	19–20	20–21	21–22	22–23
Athabasca	138	147	147	165	165
Grant MacEwan	345	348	348	348	351
Mount Royal	345	348	333	330	351
U of A	1,608	1,581	1,551	1,506	1,482
U of C	1,512	1,500	1,482	1,473	1,722
U of L	339	312	324	315	300
	4,287	4,236	4,185	4,137	4,371

Intriguingly, Alberta saw a net increase in full-time teaching staff at the professor levels, rising from 4,287 in the 2018–2019 school year to 4,371 last year, a 1.96% increase.

Notice, however, that last year’s numbers were the only increase under the UCP. The first 3 years of their administration saw consecutive decreases.

Here’s a more succinct look at the 4-year change in professor-level teaching staff.

	18–19	22–23	Change	% change
Athabasca	138	165	27	19.57%
Grant MacEwan	345	351	6	1.74%
Mount Royal	345	351	6	1.74%
U of A	1,608	1,482	-126	-7.84%
U of C	1,512	1,722	210	13.89%
U of L	339	300	-39	-11.50%
	4,287	4,371	84	1.96%

Even though the province saw a net increase in full-time teaching staff at the professor levels, two universities saw their numbers drop.

The University of Alberta saw the largest decrease in terms of actual number,s losing 126 of their professor-level teaching staff, which was nearly 8%. That means that 1 in every roughly 13 teaching staff at the professor levels that worked at the U of A in 2018–2019 is no longer there.

Compare that to the U of L, which lost only 39. However, because it’s a smaller school overall, that smaller decrease ended up being a bigger percentage of their total full-time teaching pool at the professor levels. The U of L lost 11.5% of their teaching staff in the upper levels, which is about 1 in 9.

When you break it down even further, the U of L has lost 36 assistant professors (-41.38%) and 9 associate professors (-5.88%) who were teaching full-time but gained 6 full professors (6/06%).

Now, let’s look at the other full-time teaching staff, which would include lecturers, sessionals, and instructors.

	18–19	19–20	20–21	21–22	22–23
Athabasca	36	42	42	45	45
Grant MacEwan	78	81	81	87	81
Mount Royal	3	0	15	15	18
U of A	18	18	18	15	15
U of C	303	315	306	321	15
U of L	108	108	117	120	120
	546	564	579	603	294

Wow. That’s quite the drop in that last year, and it looks like it’s mostly U of C.

	18–19	22–23	Change	% change
Athabasca	36	45	9	25.00%
Grant MacEwan	78	81	3	3.85%
Mount Royal	3	18	15	500.00%
U of A	18	15	-3	-16.67%
U of C	303	15	-288	-95.05%
U of L	108	120	12	11.11%
	546	294	-252	-46.15%

Sure enough, U of C, lost almost 300 of their full-time teaching staff below the professor levels, by far the largest drop of any university. U of A was the only other one to see a decrease, but they lost only 3.

That being said, they also saw 210 additional full-time teaching staff at the professors levels, by far the highest increase among all 6 universities.

MRU saw the largest increase in full-time teaching staff below the professor levels, going from just 3 in 2018–2019 to 19 in 2022–2023 last year, a 500% increase.